Australian kit

A few days after my arrival, my colleagues presented me with an “Australian starter kit”.  It included a fly swatter, sunscreen, insect repellent, wraparound sunglasses, a straw hat (I was told that I would have to supply my own corks for the brim), stick-on tattoos and a pair of thongs.  Now, before you get completely the wrong idea, I must explain that “thongs” is Australian for those cheap and cheerful sandals known in England as “flip-flops”.  A preference for skimpy G-string type underwear is not (as far as I know at this early stage in my research) part of the Australian national character.   However, each of the items in my presentation package does, I think, tell one something about what it is like to live in Australia, and, therefore what it might be like to be an Australian.

“Every stereotype in the book,” commented one onlooker. And, indeed, there was more than a nod in the direction of the caricature Australian with whom we are so familiar.  But that nod in itself, I suspect, tells us something about Australian self-confidence and sense of identity.  They are able to laugh at themselves and at others.  In Australia, you don’t take yourself too seriously or have too high an opinion of yourself, unless, of course it is a matter of life and death, or, even more importantly, sport.  There can’t be any other country in the world where sport is given quite such attention as in Australia.  All sports are played, and all taken very seriously.  If there were to be a secular church of Australia, I suspect that it would be the Church of Sport, and its icons would be Australian sporting heroes.  However, they might be inclined to retain the wine ......... and, perhaps, add some beer.

 

Of course all stereotypes contain an element of truth; the danger lies in imagining that they are the truth.   I have been wearing the straw hat, and been grateful for it, and, having never given it much thought previously, begun to appreciate why a set of corks dangling on strings from the brim, might actually be quite a good idea. Australians are a practical people, who care little for keeping up appearances, in the face of their, at times extreme, environmental conditions.  On arriving for my first day at work, for example,  in my beige linen suit and Panama hat (general issue, tropical gear, Englishman, for the use of), I was immediately advised to “ditch the coat” , and asked did I not have any shorts and sandals, which, upon closer inspection, I realised were being worn by most of my workmates.  After a day in which they so feared I might expire, they requisitioned the largest fan I have ever seen in my life to be placed in my office, I began to see the logic.

Unfortunately, I have, so far, found little use for the stick-on tattoos. Although, it is true that tattoos are very popular with many Australians, male and female, and wearing them might indeed help one to blend-in, when moving in certain circles, I am not entirely convinced that the stick-on variety would work.  They are often, as in the UK, acquired as an assertion of strength, and a rejection of authority and conventional values, as much as for the purpose of aesthetic enhancement.   And I am not quite sure how much of my masculine power and hedonistic rejection of social norms ,I might  succeed in conveying, by sporting my temporary stick-on anchor.